Cool Earth Solar is banking on solar power priced more like a bicycle than a Mercedes.
The Livermore, Calif.-based company, which is still officially in stealth mode, has raised $750,000 in capital with a goal of raising a total of $950,000 to build a prototype, according to founder Eric Cummings. Announcements of board members and executives will be coming in June, he said.
Cummings has taken a radically inexpensive approach to solar power generation, taking into account land use issues as well.
His product design calls for hoisting several connected plastic balloons, referred to as "inflatable solar concentrators," to generate electricity on solar farms.
These balloon-shaped solar collectors (see presentation PDF file for diagram) use plastics to reflect light onto photovoltaic panels to generate power.
The technique of concentration is being actively pursued by several companies because it allows solar devices to squeeze more electricity from expensive solar cells.
Cool Earth Solar says its solar collectors, which are about two meters in diameter, will be cheaper than other concentrators because of the inexpensive plastic it will use to magnify light. Typically, concentrators use sophisticated lenses or polished aluminum.
Cummings envisions that these balloons will be cabled together above farmland and would be replaced every year. That's a radical notion in the solar industry where providers typically warranty panels for 20 or 25 years.
By placing the concentrators above farms and other rural areas, the sun can be put to work generating electricity at a large scale without taking up huge tracts of land, according to Cummings. The design calls for the PV "receiver" to be cooled by circulating water.
Cummings says that his "phase 2" design deployed at large-scale farms will be able to generate electricity at 29 cents per watt. That's far below the industry benchmark, usually measured at $5 to $7 per watt.
Cool Earth Solar, like many green technology companies, is trying out new ideas or recycling abandoned ones to build a business. (See stories on Planktos and Magenn Power for other examples of "out of the box" green tech thinking.)
As with many of these early stage companies, investors and potential buyers will be tracking how well Cool Earth Solar's cost-per-watt projections match with initial tests.
AUSTIN, Texas--If you can't get the sun to the solar cell, bring the cell to the sun.
That's one of the ideas behind SolBeam, a company that pitched to investors at the Clean Energy Venture Summit here on Tuesday.
The company, which is looking to raise $10 million, is trying to exploit the technique of concentrating sunlight to increase the electricity output of photovoltaic (PV) material. But it wants to break with traditional practices to lower power generation costs, said Daniel Colbert, the CEO of SolBeam who is also a venture capitalist at NGEN Partners.
Many large-scale concentrators place focusing lenses directly above photovoltaic material. These concentrators are typically mounted on poles or another structure so they can move during the course of the day to ensure maximum light intake.
SolBeam's design calls for decoupling the lens from the PV material. Another difference from typical concentrators is that SolBeam plans to have a flat panel.
The company envisions a few different configurations. After his presentation, Colbert described the basic design.
There will be a rectangular box that will hold the lenses that concentrate the light. Underneath that is an array that holds the photovoltaic material. To maximize the light on the array, there are two motors, or actuators, that move the PV to the optimal position, he said.
This mechanically controlled version will be the most cost-effective of SolBeam's anticipated products, delivering electricity at 15 cents per kilowatt, he said.
Other designs call for "steering" the light to hit the PV at the optimal angle.
The company has already received seed funding.
AUSTIN, Texas--When most people think of solar energy they think of panels on people's homes. But if you follow the money, investors are betting that large-scale solar from companies like Ausra are the most cost-competitive.
Ausra, which presented at the Clean Energy Venture Summit here on Tuesday, is testing a system to generate power at centralized stations. These solar parks use concentrating solar power to create steam that turns a turbine to make electricity.
If constructed on a large enough scale,these solar thermal plants are already cost-effective when compared with fossil-fuel power generation, according to advocates of the approach. (See photo of another concentrating solar plant here.)
Ausra's twist is "thermal storage." In addition to generating steam from its array of special metal tubes, Ausra stores hot water that a power plant can draw on during times when the sun is not shining.
That thermal storage is key to competing on price even at peak demand times, said Robert Morgan, the chief development officer of Ausra, who spoke on Tuesday.
The company's system, which is now testing in Australia, can operate at 10 cents per kilowatt hour for plants between 100 and 200 megawatts. For plants between 100 and 500 megawatts, the cost goes down to 8 cents per kilowatt hour, said Morgan
That means they can compete with existing natural gas plants, which operate at 12 cents per kilowatt hour, he said.
"With thermal storage, we can compete with coal on price," he said. Coal-fueled plants are typically the cheapest sources of power.
Ausra, which has been relatively quiet about its plans until now, is backed by venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins and Khosla Ventures.
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